Is breast cancer linked to induced abortions?

Bethesda (Map, News) - To area anti-abortion-rights advocates, there is no more a glaring sign of pro-abortion-rights hypocrisy than its claim to be a guardian of women’s health while denying the induced abortion-breast cancer link.

But the National Cancer Institute and the sector’s research and advocacy establishment reject any link between induced abortion and breast cancer, and hold that research showing otherwise is faulty.

Breast cancer is the leading cancer in American women from ages 15 to 54, and its incidence rose 32.5 percent between 1975 and 2002, according to the American Cancer Society — a post-Roe v. Wade interval in which the disease’s increase outstripped that of other major cancers in women. It has, however, stabilized since 2003.

“The National Cancer Institute is a corrupt institution,” charged Dr. Joel Brind, an endocrinologist, City University of New York professor and the author of a 1996 meta-analysis of 23 studies in the field — 17 of which, he said, showed a correlation.

Brind said there are now more than 70 studies — the earliest from 1957 that showed a 160 percent increased risk among post-abortive Japanese women — attesting to the induced abortion-breast cancer link.

He asks why, if feminism is about choice and advocacy for protecting women, the establishment is not warning women about a likely link stemming from a full-term pregnancy’s operation to negate estrogen surge effects in breasts, which don’t occur in artificially interrupted pregnancies.

“There have been multiple studies done, and none of the well-conducted ones has shown any connection between abortion and breast cancer,” said Caroline Hinestrosa, executive vice president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition. Hinestrosa assailed the methodology of all of Brind’s correlation-affirming studies, and said that a 2003 NCI conference largely confirmed her view.

“I don’t believe there’s a link,” Marsha Oakley, a nurse at The Hoffberger Breast Center at Baltimore’s Mercy Hospital, said about a subject she considers “too controversial.” A colleague, Sue Appling, agreed, citing NCI’s no-link finding.

“That’s just a lot of double-talk,” Brind said of Hinestrosa’s position, noting she isn’t a scientist. “Having a child is a protective factor; not having a child is a risk factor. The overriding ethics question here is one of informed consent.”

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